Category Archives: Health, Disease and Medical

Week 50: Fundraising for Make-A-Wish

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In the movie The Never Ending Story, Bastian learns the power of imagination….

 

Empress Moonchild:  One grain of sand. It is all that remains of my vast empire.

Bastian: Fantasia has totally disappeared?

Empress Moonchild: Yes.

Bastian: Then everything has been in vain.

Empress Moonchild: No, it hasn’t. Fantasia can arise in you. In your dreams and wishes Bastian.

Bastian: How?

Empress Moonchild: Open your hand.

She puts the grain of sand  into his hand and he looks at it…

 

 

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Empress Moonchild: What are you going to wish for?

Bastian: I don’t know.

Empress Moonchild: Then there will be no Fantasia any more.

Bastian:  How many wishes do I get?

Empress Moonchild: As many as you want. And the more wishes you make, the more magnificent Fantasia will become.

Bastian:  Really?

Empress Moonchild: Try it.

Bastian: Then my first wish is…

Moonchild follows his gaze and smiles…

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Week 37: An Intergalactic Journey to Jupiter to fight Parkinson’s Disease

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Sometimes Mother Nature creatively challenges your plans. A late winter storm dropped 22 inches of snow on our town last week. The storm left behind a magical landscape of thickly drifted blankets of snow, icing-draped trees pulled low across the roads, and…. a State of Emergency.  It looked like a fairy tale and it cancelled my charity activity for the week.

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Week 20: A Visit to the Market Street Mission

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“Life is meaningless without purpose and hope”…. these were words spoken by one of theIMG_2615 former residents of the Market Street Mission, sharing his story with our group of volunteers. His story was unique to him but also familiar to other stories of addiction – a progressive spiral that moved from drinking to marijuana to increasingly powerful drugs, along the way experiencing homelessness, jail sentences, a multitude of court-mandated rehab centers, isolation from family….

 

The ‘bottom’ – the turning point – is different for each addict. Unfortunately, for over 100 people in the U.S. a day, that bottom is death. For our speaker, the bottom came when a 30-bag-a-day cocaine habit ended with an epiphany after almost dying from another overdose. Eventually he ended up at the Mission’s Recovery Program where he found a place of acceptance, spirituality, hope and possibility.

 

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Week 13: 60 Minutes and Some Cookies Will Save a Life: The NY Blood Center

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NY Blood center title photo

 

Count with me … one… two… Every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood for a transfusion. Cancer patients, surgery patients, accident victims, burn victims, sick newborns, mothers who experience complications during birth, AIDS and sickle cell anemia patients, etc…. It probably took you about 14 seconds to read to this point. 7 people in the U.S. needed a blood transfusion in that time. Read more